Claremont CollegesScholarship @ Claremont
Scripps Senior Theses Scripps Student Scholarship
2014
The Plots of Alexanderplatz: A Study of the Spacethat Shaped Weimar BerlinCarrie Grace LatimerScripps College
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Recommended CitationLatimer, Carrie Grace, "The Plots of Alexanderplatz: A Study of the Space that Shaped Weimar Berlin" (2014). Scripps Senior Theses.Paper 430.http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/430
THE PLOTS OF ALEXANDERPLATZ: A STUDY OF THE SPACE THAT
SHAPED WEIMAR BERLIN
by
CARRIE GRACE LATIMER
SUBMITTED TO SCRIPPS COLLEGE IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT
OF THE DEGREE OF BACHELOR OF ARTS
PROFESSOR MARC KATZ
PROFESSOR DAVID ROSELLI
APRIL 25 2014
Latimer 2
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements 3
Introduction 4
Chapter One: Berlin Alexanderplatz: The Making of the Central Transit Hub 8
The Design Behind Alexanderplatz
The Spaces of Alexanderplatz
Chapter Two: Creative Space: Alfred Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz 23
All-Consuming Trauma
Biberkopf’s Relationship with the Built Environment
Döblin’s Literary Metropolis
Chapter Three: Alexanderplatz Exposed: Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Film 39
Berlin from Biberkopf’s Perspective
Exposing the Subterranean Trauma
Conclusion 53
References 55
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Acknowledgements
I wish to thank all the people who contributed to this project. Firstly, to Professor Marc
Katz and Professor David Roselli, my thesis readers, for their patient guidance,
enthusiastic encouragement and thoughtful critiques. Secondly, I would like to thank my
sister, Stephanie, for her dedicated help in editing and constant support throughout the
entire process. I would also like to thank the city I fell in love with Spring 2013: Berlin.
The culture, the people, the beer, and most importantly the urban landscape, shaped my
ideas for this paper and furthered my interest and admiration for the historical German
narrative. Lastly, words cannot express how grateful I am to my parents for their kindness,
love and for always believing in me.
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Introduction
“The city is redundant: it repeats itself so that something will stick in the mind. […]
Memory is redundant: it repeats signs so that the city can begin to exist.”
– Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities (Calvino 19)
In the words of Italo Calvino, a twentieth-century Italian novelist, the city is a
common experience. Different from any other human community, cities function as
complex centers for interaction between business, politics, and the common collective.
However, Richard Sennett, a scholar who studies the social experience in cities, states,
“there are probably as many different ways of conceiving what a city is as there are cities.
A simple definition therefore has its attractions. The simplest is that a city is a human
settlement where strangers are likely to meet” (Sennett 39). Sennett believes cities are
infinitely unique because cities are constantly evolving social experiments. New replaces
old through architecture, technology and population growth, and cities therefore must
embrace change on a day-to-day basis. This circulation of new and old occurs in an
organic flow, adapting to the narrative imposed by the structure of both the city and the
nation.
Berlin, Germany is a city that embraces its ever-evolving identity. Berlin has
suffered the structural devastation of two World Wars, multiple extreme, divisive
political sanctions, and periods when it was considered an international pariah. Just one
of these hardships could have been enough to hinder Berlin’s success as a city. However,
during the Weimar Period in the early twentieth century, a time defined by a
sophisticated culture of creative expression through the press and cinema accompanied
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by a focus on built spaces and housing for the masses, Berlin became the poster child for
the booming modern metropolis.
One space in Berlin exemplified the values and transformations of the Weimar
Period. Alexanderplatz, a large public square in the center of the city, functioned as the
center of Berlin not only because of its geographical situation in the city and function as
its main transport hub, but also its ability to support the constant flow and gathering of
individuals. Alexanderplatz’s unique nature interested many theorists, scholars and urban
planners during the years of 1919 to 1933. Walter Benjamin, Siegfried Kracauer,
Theodor Adorno, and Herbert Marcuse, are among the thinkers of the time that examined
Berlin and the effect of the public sphere on the individual. These theorists were featured
in Metropolis Berlin: 1890-1940, an anthology of over two hundred contemporary texts,
in which many of these essays focus on Alexanderplatz as a node and fluid transit space
due to its architecture and urban planning. In the following three chapters, I argue
Berlin’s Alexanderplatz not only a major modern public transit hub of mechanized
transportation, but also a major transit space for the exchange of ideas and information.
The first chapter will explore Alexanderplatz as a space, by looking at the way it’s
design embraced both its function as a central transit hub of modern transportation and as
a transit space for ideas and information. It is clear from an in-depth historical analysis of
the variety of urban plans, both spatial and architectural that Alexanderplatz experienced
between 1900 and 1937, that the fluidity of transformation in the space supported the
great visionaries of the future. Mobility became the defining principle of the Weimar era
and Alexanderplatz is its prime example.
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In the second chapter, Alexanderplatz is re-imagined through the words of
Alfred’s Döblin’s novel Berlin Alexanderplatz: The Story of Franz Biberkopf as a place
where the individual and landscape are integrated together. Through Döblin’s story of
Franz Biberkopf, Alexanderplatz comes alive through a creative literary context. The
symbiotic relationship between the protagonist Franz Biberkopf and the city of Berlin
display’s the connection between an individual’s story and the common collective
experience in the public sphere. Alexanderplatz is a space that thousands of people pass
through daily, making it a constantly different environment filled with different
characters. Maintained through the flow and gather of Alexanderplatz, Biberkopf is
haunted by his past trauma, but inspired by the constant fluidity of the transit of
Alexanderplatz with the hope to move forward with his life.
In the final chapter, Alexanderplatz is explored through another creative medium.
Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s film adaptation of Berlin Alexanderplatz revolutionarily
depicts Alexanderplatz visually through the point of view of Döblin’s characters. In the
film, Fassbinder is able to expose Franz Biberkopf’s deep-seated traumatic past to the
viewer by internalizing the city within Biberkopf. He offers Biberkopf as a confession of
the common human experience in Berlin during the 1920s, as well as in the 1970s.
Through juxtaposing the Weimar Period with the German Democratic Republic (GDR),
Fassbinder clarifies how Germany has been dealing with its traumatic past, through the
lens of Franz’s Biberkopf traumatic history and experience in Berlin Alexanderplatz.
Alexanderplatz is a culturally significant space from all these perspectives: the
historical urban plan, the novel, and the film. In these three different representations of
Alexanderplatz, all facets of Weimar-period Berlin culture are encompassed.
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Alexanderplatz is a landscape where structure meets organic disorganization. The balance
between its dual functions as a specialized transit hub as well as a gathering center for the
thinkers of the Weimar Period, allows Berlin’s Alexanderplatz to serve a multi-
dimensional purpose. Alexanderplatz functioned as both a major transit space for the
movement of transportation and pedestrians, but also the transit space for the movement
of ideas and information.
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Chapter 1
Berlin Alexanderplatz: The Making of the Central Transit Hub
The physical and creative influence of Alexanderplatz during the Weimer Period
was successful due to the fluid, adaptive role it played in Berlin. Alexanderplatz held
different amounts of significance throughout its existence, but reached its height of
importance during the early twentieth century. During these fifteen years it was the
“Mitte” of Berlin, the setting for the famous 1920s novel Berlin Alexanderplatz and its
haunting film adaptation by Rainer Fassbinder. Prior to that, Alexanderplatz was an
ordinary square, which during the middle ages was a cattle market. It was later
transformed into a military parade square and an exercise ground for the nearby barracks
until the mid 19th
century (Jelavich 5). Not until the construction of the Central Market
Hall in 1886 and Tietz department store between 1904 and 1911, did Alexanderplatz fully
embrace its central role as the main shopping center of Berlin. Alexanderplatz began
gaining centrality starting in 1886 with the addition of a separate stop on the streetcar line.
Additionally, an elevated railway was added, which increased traffic through the square,
making Alexanderplatz the main transit center as well. Alexanderplatz’s physical
situation within Berlin added the increased visitation and popularity by being located in
the center, close to the river Spree and Museum Island, which both functioned as cultural
centers in Berlin. Berlin, as a metropolis, a cultured and modern city, thrived between the
years of 1880 to 1930. Within those years, Weimar culture embraced Berlin and the
presence of theorists, artists, and critics. It was a time of intellectual and cultural growth,
which stimulated Berlin as a central transit space of ideas and information, as well as
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people and goods. “Mobility” became the defining principle of the era. And Berlin
Alexanderplatz was its three-dimensional correlative (Germany Senate Department).
Even though the Weimar Republic appears in history to have developed quickly
with the Industrial Revolution and the international recognition of Berlin as a metropolis,
Alexanderplatz as a central Platz was in the making for some time. In 1895,
Alexanderplatz was gifted a 7.5 meter statue of the city’s symbolic goddess, Berolina.
Made of bronze, she occupied a small-grassed area on the northwestern edge of
Alexanderplatz, which would later be located in front of 1904 department store Kaufhaus
Hermann Tietz. By the end of the 19th
century, the Platz was divided into two distinct
sections. The northern section developed as a traffic hub where several lines of the horse-
drawn tramcars criss-cross. The southern portion of the Platz developed into an
ornamental square with gardens. A significant number of buildings also legitimized
Alexanderplatz as a nodal point in Berlin. The Grand Hotel was built in 1883, and later,
in 1886, both police headquarters and the local court building found home in
Alexanderplatz (Germany Senate Department).
Alexanderplatz popularity didn’t happen upon Berlin by accident. It was designed
for maximum capacity and commercial capital, as well designed to function as the main
Aerial picture,
1912. View from
south onto
Alexanderplatz
with the statue
"Berolina" in front
of the department
store "Tietz”
Source: Germany
Senate Department for
Urban Development
and the Environment
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transport hub and central gathering space. Able to accommodate more cars and
pedestrians on ground level while simultaneously supporting a railway system,
Alexanderplatz became the central node in Berlin through this strategic urban planning.
The term “node”, introduced by Kevin Lynch in his book The Image of the City (1960),
describes the essential features for creating a successful city form. This, he argues “must
be somewhat noncommittal, plastic to the purposes and perceptions of its citizens”
(Lynch 91). This node must be malleable to change and the city must embrace a constant
shift of dominance between particular neighborhoods and squares. If the environment is
“visibly organized and sharply identified, then the citizen can inform it with his own
meanings and connections. Then it will become a true place, remarkable and
unmistakable” (Lynch 92). Lynch uses the word “place” strategically here, which
highlights its distinction from mere “space”. As describe by geographer, John Agnew,
“place is the setting for social rootedness and landscape continuity;” where space is
synonymous with the physical location and functions as an organic, shifting definition
(Agnew 8). Kevin Lynch’s definition of a “node” is a place that follows a specific
architectural structure by defining the place as a “sharp, closed boundary, which does not
trail off uncertainly on every side; more remarkable if provided with one or two objects
which are foci of attention” (Lynch 102). Node, or points, are the strategic spots in a city
into which an observer can enter, and which are the intensive foci to and from which
traveling begins and end. This was true of Alexanderplatz, as an essential place in the
greater framework of Berlin.
The city square has historically been defined as a freer space than the rural town
square because it is designed to accommodate the masses of widely diverse backgrounds,
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temperaments, occupations and class. In order to accomplish this marriage between the
particular and diverse interests, many different facets of public life must play a role in
developing this place. The central square in any city is built, primarily, for the flow of
movement and, secondly, for an inviting atmosphere. It is not in the architects or planners
purview to build this feeling of a place since it develops through the social interactions
that fill the square. However, the architects of a square can shape and direct the way these
interactions arise or happen through structuring the flow of walking and gathering spaces.
Alexanderplatz flow of movement aided in it becoming a hub for consumerism as well as
a hub for transit.
Throughout the 19th
century, Alexanderplatz continued to grow to where in the
1920s everything and everyone in Berlin revolved around the Platz. The hotels,
restaurants, cafes, theaters, cinemas, and departments stores allowed Alexanderplatz to
shape its own individual identity. This focus on Alexanderplatz, however, wasn’t random.
Practically all lines of the transit system led here. At its point of transfer, hundreds and
thousands of people bustled past each other off to their next destination only entering
each other’s life for a moment. There exists a distinct union between path and node that
occurs in Alexanderplatz so “the traveler must see how he enters the node, where the
break occurs, and how he goes outward” (Lynch 103). The many paths, “of habitual or
potential lines of movement through the urban complex, [or] most potent means which
the whole can be ordered,” led the masses to Alexanderplatz (Lynch 96). This is where
visual hierarchy of the streets and ways meet the functional hierarchy, highlighting their
unity as continuous perceptual elements. Lynch argues that a street is perceived, in fact,
as a thing, which goes toward something, but the Berliner would have been convinced at
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this time that every road led to Alexanderplatz. Based on the increase number of vehicles
crossing Alexanderplatz as a product of Berlin’s rapid industrialization before and after
World War I, the traffic increased from about 1,200 vehicles daily in 1918 to
approximately 229,000 in 1939. Due to this exponential increase, the functionality and
flow of the square was essential for day-to-day usage (Germany Senate Department).
The Design behind Alexanderplatz
Plans for the multilevel public transport hub were drawn up by J. Bousset in 1913
and designed by Alfred Grenander (Germany Senate Department). Due to the increasing
traffic problems in Berlin at the end of the 19th
century, Berlin searched for a solution and
drew inspiration from the designs of Werner Von Siemens in New York and his elevated
railway. The first U-Bahn line, the U2, entered service on 1 July 1913. Many claimed it
was “the most beautiful and modern subway in the world” with its “[…] variety of
brightly lit stores amid the profusion of shiny blue tiles covering the underground
corridors” (Jelavich 5). The original route started at Warschauer Brücke on the eastern
side of the city, and ended at Zoologischer Garten on the western side, stopping at the
Cutaway view onto
the numerous
levels for public
and private
transport at
Alexanderplatz,
drawing from 1930
Source: Germany
Senate Department for
Urban Development
and the Environment
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major hubs: Nollendorfplatz, Postsdamer Platz and Oranienstraße. The U2 was not the
only railway line that was installed. Alexanderplatz was designed to have mainline and
suburban railways routed on elevated tracks, three underground railway lines that ran on
three different levels below ground, and, at ground level, omnibuses and trams that ran
alongside private traffic (which, at the time, still included the broadest range of vehicles –
both motorized and non-motorized). By having all lines of new transportation convene at
Alexanderplatz, there became a need for multiple options of subterranean and street level
transportation (Germany Senate Department).
Bousset and Grenander were not the only ones analyzing this central space for
redesign. In 1926, Martin Wagner became the director of Berlin’s department of urban
planning and “immediately singled out the Alexanderplatz for a major overhaul; […] he
contended that it would have to be rebuilt completely every twenty-five years” (Jelavich
5). During this time, Berlin was expanding its boundaries through the Great Berlin Act,
which incorporated many neighboring towns and expanded Berlin’s population from two
to nearly four million inhabitants nearly overnight. Accommodating a larger population
and denser traffic flow led Berlin to reevaluate many of its public transit and gathering
centers, not only Alexanderplatz. Outlined in “The Design Problem of a City Square for a
Metropolis” Martin Wagner goes through seven steps to make Alexanderplatz designed
so that “function and form, plan and elevation, ground surface and street front fuse
together into an organic unity” (Wagner 349). The steps discussed in his outline
encompassed traffic capacity, the consumer’s role, and the architecture that would
support the idea that a “metropolitan square is at one and the same time a stopping place
and a sluice gate: a stopping place for consumer wealth, and a sluice gate for flowing
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traffic” (Wagner 350). Wagner’s focus on consumerism is evident when reading through
his seven points highlighting the untapped potential that businesses were to capitalize on.
Firstly, the metropolitan square is designed to entice the individual with consumerist
stimuli that surrounds the periphery of the square, allowing the center to function strictly
as a transit zone. Wagner outlines the requirements for designing Alexanderplatz as an
“organism[s] of formally distinctive visual appearance” which proves to be slightly
hypocritical in his plan for indiscreet architecture (Wagner 350). In point three and five,
Wagner states:
“3. Traffic must be able to cross the square with the maximum achievable
dispatch, smoothness, and clarity. A metropolitan square therefore requires
separation of the paths used by railed vehicles (streetcars), wheeled vehicles
(motorcars), and pedestrian traffic. The ideal of a square used as a traffic
intersection is a design that permits each of the three categories of traffic to pass
through the intersection without same-level crossings. (Traffic circulating at
different levels.)
5. The effect of these requirements is to make the metropolitan square a highly
sophisticated and expensive piece of engineering, the costs of which have to be
wholly or partly recouped via the buildings surrounding the square. The
circulating traffic on the square has to be balanced by what may be termed
‘standing traffic,’ which taps the consumer wealth of the crowds passing through
the square (shops, restaurants and cafes, department stores, business premises, and
so on). This results in a concentration of buildings the facades of which need to be
aligned along the circulation paths of pedestrians—that is, of the consumers”
(Wagner 351).
In dissecting these two points, Wagner’s design aims for the seamless integration
the consumer in a modern architectural landscape. The pairing of the pedestrian and
consumer to where they are seen as one person in the Alexanderplatz highlights
Wagner’s desire for quick development which in turn produced high economic yields. In
order to successfully achieve this integration of pedestrian and consumer, modern
transport had to combine both speed and leisure simultaneously. However, to achieve this
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balance, every type of transportation had to be accommodated in Alexanderplatz, which
ultimately lead to a forming of a transport hierarchy. This hierarchy would depend on and
change due to how many people traveled in each type of transport and what class they
were a part of. Cars were designated to the upper class, subway to the lower class, but
everyone congregated in the middle at street level. However, the pedestrian at street level
became a pawn to be moved about by architects and engineers designing these spaces,
due to the intense focus on modernity and mechanical mass transit, making it essential
the pedestrian learn how to pass through this machine-focused space. Only when
pedestrians developed the role as consumer as well, did they gain their significant role
and power on the street. Wagner worked toward balancing the “standing traffic” with the
circulating traffic within his plan, and hoped to find harmony between the machine and
the human. With all the facades facing the center, the pedestrian was focused on the
outside of the square, scanning the windows, and turning their back to the hum of
motorized movement. The architecture and displays provided at eye level in the
metropolitan square are specifically designed to reach out to the individual in hopes they
stop and become “standing traffic”. During this time, an emphasis on design and display
of products was a way of individualizing the mass-produced world.
Model of the Alexanderplatz –
Plan by Martin Wagner, 1929
Source: Germany Senate
Department for Urban Development
and the Environment
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Wagner’s visionary schemes for Alexanderplatz allowed for social place and
traffic space to function together in a single spot. Due to Wagner’s continued interest in
redesigning Alexanderplatz, along with other architects, the city of Berlin called a urban
design competition for the Platz in February 1929. Peter Behrens, Hans and Wassily
Luckhardt along with Alfons Anker, Paul Mebes, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Johann
Emil Schaudt and Müller-Erkelenz from Cologne were invited to take part in the
competition. Luckhardt & Anker were awarded first prize. But the design of Peter
Behrens, the second prizewinner, was appointed. His design would better cope with the
preexisting three levels of underground railway lines (Germany Senate Department). It
required a large sum of money, 20 million Reichsmark to be exact, which Berlin was not
in possession of at that time. Germany was struggling at this point with large reparation
sums from the demands of the Treaty of Versailles. Hyperinflation was accelerating
towards a tragic climax, which occurred in November 1923, when one American dollar
was worth 14 billion marks. The struggle for daily existence was a more pressing matter
in Berlin than large-scale building project. Architects were dreaming of the buildings and
monuments that could be built, taking inspiration from America and the “advanced
building technologies, steel frames, skyscrapers, and growing skyline” (Whyte and Frisby
316). Peter Behrens’ plan followed Wagner’s original idea of the horseshoe-shaped
perimeter block development, incorporating the preexisting modern eight-story steel-
framed buildings, Alexanderhaus and Berolinahaus. Due to the contrast to Martin
Wagner’s original plan and spatial design layout, the square ultimately could not be built
as a classical roundabout, i.e. a circle, but instead was built as an oval, thereby loosing
the relationship to the axes of the main roads as once intended by Wagner. With
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Landsberger Straße, Königstraße, Neue Königstraße, and the two sections of
Alexanderstraße, a total of five streams of traffic converged into the square (Germany
Senate Department). The grassy area in the center of the traffic island was exclusively
reserved for the tram traffic (see image below). This integration of natural and built space
in the center of the square, untouchable by the pedestrian, creates a boundary that makes
pedestrians feel disconnected and excluded from the public space. The external world has
the ability to evoke a sense of isolation among individuals.
Not only does the public sphere create this feeling of isolation, but the
architectural design of the public sphere also creates a feeling of isolation with its
obvious favoritism towards accommodating the mass transit system. Wagner’s lack of
interest in creative architectural design lead him to focus more on functional form. The
attention to the architecture or lack there of with “implies that the buildings surrounding
the square do not possess permanent economic or architectural value” (Wagner 351). A
modern, sleek, financially efficient design dictated the decisions that were made during
the process of building. The architect’s focus wasn’t on the building any longer, since the
public was “possessed by a sense of haste that allows [them] no leisure to become
engrossed in detail. Dashing in [their] speedy conveyances through the streets of the great
cities, [they] can no longer take in the details of the buildings [they] pass” (Behrens 127).
Alexanderplatz in
1935, aerial picture
from southeast
showing the new
design of the square by
Peter Behrens
Source: Germany Senate
Department for Urban
Development and the
Environment
Latimer 18
Instead, the buildings sole purpose was to present the commodity that was being sold in a
pleasing display at ground level. The individual buildings that made up the urban
landscape no longer had a voice of their own.
The Spaces of Alexanderplatz
Alexanderplatz firstly functions as a physical, working transit space, but also as a
symbolic transit space, one where ideas and capital circulate among individuals, groups,
and masses. One of the essential spaces in Alexanderplatz that aids the dialogue of ideas
was the café. Its emergence and importance in cultivating ideas and conversation
blossomed in the early 20th
century. Not only did the café multiply as fast as the
population of Berlin, but Berliners themselves became increasingly accustomed to café
culture. Walter Benjamin, in his essay “Berlin Chronicle”, describes the function of the
café as an “elementary and indispensable diversion[s] of the citizen of a great metropolis,
[it offered entrance] into another world, the more exotic the better” and supported the
“gentrification” of this niche (Benjamin 23). Varying groups, ranging from the
bourgeoisie to the artists, occupied the dark, smoky corners until the early morning
discussing current issues over beer and coffee. A hierarchy began to form in the café as
“the ‘artists’ withdrew into the background, to become more and more a part of the
furniture, while the bourgeois, […], began to occupy the place—as a place of relaxation”
(Benjamin 23). Working against the internal hierarchy, the café was open for many hours
and sometimes “in the early morning, between eight and ten, the air is infernal: cold
smoke, rancid powder, floor polish and dust” criminals and dignitaries came within close
encounter with each other. The café community created a microcosm of the metropolis
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where the exchange of ideas occurs in a public space can feel surprisingly private and
personal. Dark corners, comfortable chairs, and a drink ease the individual into deep
thought and cause them to stay “from five in the afternoon to one in the morning” (Quinz
527). The Romanische Café, located at the end of Kurfürstendamm, with regulars
including Alfred Döblin, George Grosz, and Alfred Kerr, could be described as “a huge
public bath, divided into a large pool for swimmers and a smaller pool for nonswimmers.
Visitors to these two sections have little in common with one another” (Quinz 527). The
café was the melting pot of the metropolis, which consequently made it a conflicting
environment where various circles from different cultural, political, and class groups
gathered.
The Weimar Republic stood for freedom of expression and growth both creatively
and industrially, which was furthered through the café culture and the discussions that
arose of embedded emotions surrounding national identity and public persona. These
discussion encouraged circulation, which is an essential feature of the metropolis: the
circulation of money, of traffic, and of ideas. Through film, these concepts were
expressed visually to the viewers and integrated into the public dialogue and café
discussions. The interior architecture of the cinema bridged the gap between the past and
future, which was a common theme of the Weimar years, finding a union of “solutions
that respects modernity in the organization of the building and ornamental tradition in its
décor” (Poelzig 529). The cinema is defined and designed around the inevitable absence
of light and the way the individual as a result interacts with the space. The cinema aims to
be architecturally stimulating, while not distracting the audience from the main purpose
of the cinema, to showcase film. The theater also “should represent to the less favored of
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its patrons, something finer and more desirable than their ordinary surroundings; and to
the better class, it should never present itself as inferior to the environment to which such
persons are accustomed” in order to cater to all classes of people (Valentine 21). Adorned
in “plush red velvet seats, bronzed fixtures, brass railings, and murals of historical or
allegorical scenes,” the theater’s color schemes and fixtures came directly from the opera
house and concert hall (Valentine 21). The films being shown in this space, such as
Metropolis and Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis depicted the modernity of the German
city and its effect on the public ranging from changing class structure to the role of the
individual. Not only was the content of the film revolutionary in addressing the difficult
topics facing society, but the film style and scale of space that was shown on screen
helped change the public’s perspective.
This concept of the display and objectified view carried over from film unto the
display window. The storefront and in particular the display window became a priority of
architects and designers. At the beginning of the 20th
century, Alexanderplatz defined
itself as a “temple of consumerism”. Three major department stores - Hahn, Wertheim,
and Tietz - all positioned themselves around Alexanderplatz. The Tietz department store
was by far the most modern and dominant, with is 250 meter long window frontage on
Alexanderstraße making it one of the longest facades of any department store in the
world. Creating a desirable fantasy of consumption for the consumer helped the urban
environment function as both a public and private sphere. A fleeting glance was all the
department store required to pull the consumer in and allow its products to produce a
personal relationship with the consumer. In Karl Ernst Osthaus’s essay, “The Display
Window”, he provides a true image of a Berliner and their role as a consumer. The
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window “wants to captivate the passers-by, to tempt them, to stop them in their tracks;
[…] everyman should feel that the item that has caught his attention is specifically there
for him” (Osthaus 102). Throughout the essay, he describes the display window as
synonymous with a quasi-religious experience: “Anything displayed thus has the
magnificence of a king with jewels glittering in his crown […]. Here the passer-by stands
spellbound; silken apparel rustles around him, and before him the lips part that he—shod
in these boots—will kiss” (Osthaus 103). At the end of the essay, the reader realizes
Osthaus was simply describing a pair of black leather boots, the most essential item of
clothing for every Berliner. This creative, poetic essay was originally published in the
Deutscher Werkbund, an interest group that brought together designers, educators, and
industrialists with the stated goal of ennobling industrial production through good design.
The yearbooks, the Deutscher Werkbunds, published before the outbreak of World War I
coupled radical polemics with images of contemporary technology – airships, cars,
airplanes, ocean liners, and the like—which had a profound and lasting impact on the
visual language of modernist design. Continually throughout this period, technology is
mixed with creative expression, which becomes a seamless pairing, which eventually
turns into a situation where one cannot not exist without the other.
Weimar Berlin Alexanderplatz stimulated and supported political dialogue and
demonstration through providing a space to gather. Rebuilding from the destruction of
World War I and trying to harness the new hope and potential economic boom that arose
from the ashes, Berlin made economic, political, and cultural changes in the following
thirty years. These changes make Berlin a city that is at the center of people’s attention:
in writing, in film, in stories. Before 1933, when the National Socialist Party took power,
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Berlin and generally Germany as a whole were struggling with their identity. At the end
of World War I, monarchy and aristocracy was overthrown and new republic was born:
the Weimar Republic. Berlin remained the capital and location of various political
uprisings including the November Revolution. In late 1918, the communist party of
Germany led a coup that ultimately failed in overthrowing the government. While this
instilled a greater sense of identity, it was at the price of dividing Berlin into dueling
identities. This stimulated more Berliners to gathered in the streets and squares to discuss
what is happening in the political sphere since they realized the direct effect it played in
their lives. In particular, Alexanderplatz was home to these demonstrations and
conversations because the presence of newspapers and literature everywhere lining the
walls and kiosks of public spaces. The conversations were spilling out of the cafes onto
the streets, where critics and theorists started listening and incorporating into their
analysis of the Weimar Period. From this, a large amount of work flowed out of Weimar
Berlin about the public sphere and its interaction with the individual identity, including
Alfred Döblin’s revolutionary novel, Berlin Alexanderplatz: The Story of Franz
Biberkopf. This novel encompassed all aspects of the Weimar period through the
complicated relationship of its two main characters, Berlin Alexanderplatz and Franz
Biberkopf.
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Chapter 2
Creative Space: The Influence of Alfred Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz
The preceding chapter explains the rise of Alexanderplatz as the center of the
Weimar Republic through the early twentieth century. Through a modern, functional plan
that supported a flow of creative capital, 1920s Alexanderplatz as a space spatially and
culturally, has held a lasting influence throughout history. Many writers and artists were
influenced by the graceful industrial power Alexanderplatz exuded and as a result, the
Alexanderplatz was the focus of many essays, films, and novels during this time period.
One of these inspired authors included, Alfred Döblin, who published his novel Berlin
Alexanderplatz: The Story of Franz Biberkopf in 1929. However, before his publication
of Berlin Alexanderplatz, the public knew the man, but not his work. Born in 1878,
Bruno Alfred Döblin was the fourth of five children. He attended Friedrich Wilhelm
University in Berlin; known today as Humboldt University, where he studied general
medicine. He focused his education on neurology and psychiatry, eventually opening his
own medical practice on the edge of Alexanderplatz, near Scheuenviertel (the shed
quarter). Towards the end of the 19th century, this quarter became home to thousands of
Jews fleeing from Russia and was given the name “the ghetto of Berlin” (Jelavich 7).
This identity shaped Alexanderplatz’s surrounding population and the industry that later
developed, by being “signified by poorer sectors of the population” and the “the process
of modernization brought with them massive and economic change, which offered
employment to some but made other jobs redundant” (Jelavich 8). This dynamic mixture
of pure industrial capitalism and bourgeois creative playground inspired Döblin to leave
his career in medicine and write a novel based on Alexanderplatz and what it represented
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during the Weimar Republic. This chapter will explore, the historical structure of
Alexanderplatz through the context of Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz. The seamless
symbiotic relationship between the protagonist Franz Biberkopf and the setting Berlin
Alexanderplatz, illustrates the influential role of public space, specifically Alexanderplatz,
had in shaping the movement of the people and ideas of the Weimar Republic.
Berlin Alexanderplatz covers eighteen months in the life of Franz Biberkopf,
beginning with his release from Tegel Prison and ending with his release from the Buch
Insane Asylum. In the middle, Biberkopf experiences Berlin through numerous lovers,
jobs, and hardships. In the beginning “Franz Biberkopf leaves Tegel Prison which a
former foolish life had led him. It is difficult to gain a foothold in Berlin again, but he
finally does. This makes him happy, now he vows to lead a decent life” (Döblin 3).
Biberkopf, a pimp, had been sentenced to Tegel for murdering his lover and employee,
Ida. His journey can be divided into three “hammer blows” of punishment. Each of these
“blows” represents a different event where Biberkopf is punished for his naïve trust in
others. His first blow comes after he becomes unknowingly involved in illegal business
with Luders, his girlfriend’s uncle. This causes him to question his ability to lead an
honest life and proceeds to disappear into the landscape of Berlin to the point where
“Meck and Lina can’t find Franz Biberkopf. They run all around, through half of Berlin
but they don’t find him” (Döblin 151). Eventually he reemerges to experience his second
blow. Once again, Biberkopf becomes involved with criminal business and in a car chase
is thrown out a car and ran over. As a result, he loses his right arm completely. A
discouraged Biberkopf is met with his final blow when his friend, Reinhold, kills his
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lover, Mieze. At this point, Biberkopf’s “earthly journey is ended. It is now time for him
to be crushed outright” (Döblin 573).
Döblin sets out in hopes of producing a novel that connects the reader with the
daily hardship of living in the metropolis. Prior to writing the novel, Döblin published
other periodicals and books; but when Berlin Alexanderplatz was released it was an
instant success, selling more copies in the first weeks than all of his previous books
combined (Koepke 126). Between 1931 and 1936, it appeared in nine languages,
including Dutch, English, Italian, Spanish, French and Russian. After its release in 1929,
50,000 copies had been printed and were distributed worldwide. The success of his novel
was revolutionary because of the novel’s modernist montage style, a writing technique
that entails pulling parts of the surrounding environment, i.e. advertisements or
newspaper headlines, and inserting them into the dialogue. The topic, “the Berlin
underworld” was also essential to the novel’s rise, which glorified the unglamorous
aspects of Weimar Berlin.
Another way Döblin’s novel differed from other creative pieces produced at this
time about Berlin was his attention to how the city and character affect each other in a
specific structured public transit space. Between the years of 1926 and 1928, for example,
the films Metropolis, and Berlin: Die Symphonie einer Großstadt (Symphony of the
Metropolis) premiered with great success, along with multiple English novels by authors
Stephen Spender and Christopher Isherwood, who set their novels and plays in Berlin.
Compared to these plays and essays, Berlin Alexanderplatz, integrated the city into every
element of the story, whereas the other works superficially showcased Berlin. It strove to
embrace every facet of the city, using Alexanderplatz as a microcosm to examine the city
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as a whole. The novel revolves around this totality of chaos that was Alexanderplatz,
while highlighting the implicit cooperation with the engrained capitalist framework it
functioned within. This integration of the capitalist, modern framework into the physical
structure of the city was seen through emphasis on the design of window shops and
department stores. Consequently this makes Biberkopf a passive object in time searching
for order in a city filled with sensory bombardment and brutalization. Convinced the
struggles he faces are fate, Biberkopf imitates the classic Greek tragedy hero doomed by
his fatal flaw: to see everything as a result of his own actions. Through the nine books
that make up Berlin Alexanderplatz, Biberkopf’s journeys through Berlin’s dark by-ways,
filled with diverse populations. Before he reaches a point of self-understanding, he enters
the story lost and bewildered by the city that surrounds him. For Biberkopf,
Alexanderplatz functions as a home and battleground simultaneously, with both
memories of trauma and the promise of release guiding him through the narrative.
All-Consuming Trauma
Even though Biberkopf has been living physically in the city of Berlin for the past
four years, within Tegel Prison, once he steps out of the boundary of the prison and enters
the city proper, “he shook himself, gulped. He stepped on his own foot. Then he made a
run and was sitting in the streetcar. In the midst of people. Start. At first it was as if one
was a dentist, who was grabbed a root with the forceps and pulled, the pain grows, one’s
head wants to burst” (Döblin 4). He grows comfortable with the limitations prison had
placed on him in the past four years and now the freedom of the frantic city becomes
overwhelming. He is reluctant to be discharged because to him he is reentering the prison
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of Berlin and there is nowhere else to escape to once he steps over the threshold. His first
moments in the city are raw and disjointed. Pausing at corners, disoriented, Biberkopf
screams out for help, but receives judgmental looks in return. When “the gateman walked
past him several times, showed him his car-line; he did not move. […] He was standing at
the car stop. The punishment begins” (Döblin 4). In this moment, memories come
flooding back from his previous life, and he realizes the control the city has over him.
This control it possesses is the ability to influence and test Biberkopf’s morality.
Biberkopf finds happiness in being a moral individual, even though the city continually
sucks him in to dark alleys to test his strength against the demons of his past. Berlin tests
his morals and somehow they keep pulling him into the underworld’s violence and
corruption.
Biberkopf’s first reactions to the city’s architecture and facades produce visceral
illusions mirroring his traumatic past. During his initial outing in Berlin, when he begins
making his way home, the reader is unsure if Biberkopf is moving in a specific direction
or just wandering. This is a product of Döblin’s montage writing style; which entails
pulling parts of the surrounding environment, (for example, advertisements or newspaper
headlines) and inserting them into the dialogue. In using this technique, Döblin
intertwines the environment and individual. Many times during the novel, the reader sees
“Biberkopf make his way through Berlin, often resembling ‘a dog who has lost the scent
of his trail,’ and the story takes its course through the impersonal fabric of associations,
which irritate, divert, and delay,” the actual issues he is afraid to address (Jähner 146).
The scene surrounding him disturbs Biberkopf, and, “terror struck him as he walked
down Rosenthaler Straße and saw a man and woman sitting in a little beer shop right at
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the window” (Döblin 6). Suddenly, he looks up toward the skyline and imagines the roofs
sliding off. Biberkopf searches for stability as, “the cars roared and jangled on, house-
front were rolling along one after the other without stopping. And there were roofs on the
houses, they soared atop of houses, his eyes wandered straight upward: if only the roofs
don’t slide off, but the houses stood upright” (Döblin 7). Until this point, the concrete city
structure was one of the few stable aspects of his life. However, this quickly changes due
to Biberkopf’s disjointed perception of the buildings around him.
In Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space, Bachelard describes the structures of
the city as internalized to represent the home as a body, where the roof/attic functions as
the brain. By seeing the roofs sliding off, Biberkopf sees the traditional role of “home”
falling apart around him, which creates a lack of mental security. Mental stability is
mirrored in the disillusioned environment Biberkopf creates around him. Biberkopf has
no one waiting for him when he returns home from prison, and this lack of a family
support system is expressed through his disjointed perception. The only comfort he finds
is realizing, “he is back in Berlin. He breathes Berlin again” (Döblin 302). Unable to
control the surrounding area and stop it from crumbling, Biberkopf panics and doesn’t
know whether to crumble along with it or keeping going. This struggle also arises as a
result of an individual trying to find home in a public plaza that was designed for the
masses, i.e. an aggregate. Alexanderplatz is a place where “people hurry over the ground
like bees. They hustle and bustle around here day and night, by the hundreds. The street-
cars roll past with a screech and a scrunch, yellow ones with trailers, away they go across
the planked-over Alexanderplatz, it’s dangerous to jump off” (Döblin 217).
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Biberkopf becomes a member of the masses as he reintroduces himself to
Alexanderplatz by taking a stream of jobs that allow him spend a majority of his day
there. He sells tie clips on the street outside the entrance to the subway station and then
moves on to sell newspapers in the subterranean subway level. Being involved in the
everyday hustle and bustle of the rushing commuters reconnects Biberkopf to the city, but
only on the most ephemeral level. This relationship with the space through his labor
keeps him from connecting personally with the environment and the people that pass
through it. These relationships he makes are based of a supply and demand structure.
Döblin, himself, had a similar experience in living and working close to
Alexanderplatz. As a doctor he treated different vagabonds of Berlin Mitte and
Alexanderplatz. Since Döblin lived close to Alexanderplatz, and presumably interacted
with it on a daily basis, his description is raw and honest. His personal knowledge makes
the novel approachable for the local reader because it places him or her in a familiar place.
By choosing a nondescript, busy transport hub as the central location of his novel, Döblin
connects with every Berlin reader, since on average, the “number of vehicles crossing
Alexanderplatz increased from about 1,200 vehicles daily in 1918 to approximately
229,000 in 1939,” making Alexanderplatz a familiar location for the majority of people in
Berlin (German Senate Department). When he later switched his career focus to writing,
he was asked if Berlin inhibits or impairs artistic creation and he responded by saying,
“the city as a whole has an intensely inspiring energizing power; this agitation of the
streets, shops, and vehicles provides the heat [he] must have in order to work, at all times.
It is the fuel that makes [his] motor run” (Jähner 142). The fuel of over stimulus and
running around the city, in and out of crowds, is translated into the character of Biberkopf.
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The frenzy that follows him is due to his incapacity to process the traumatic history of his
past. Normally, the environment plays a supportive role in narratives, but for Döblin’s
novel, Biberkopf and Alexanderplatz have a different relationship. Berlin is such a
powerful of a city with modernity and industrial strength that Biberkopf must adapt his
movements to the structures of traffic. There is an element of freedom that comes from
being able to go anywhere in the city via public transportation, but also entrapment in
having to function within the set schedule.
Biberkopf’s Relationship with the Built Environment
It is through this give and take relationship with Berlin that Biberkopf slowly
begins to be affected by the city. Instead of the city changing Biberkopf completely, the
modern city awakens his passionate hopes and deep anxieties that he has had all along.
For Biberkopf, his hope is to be a better person and his anxiety is of losing his morals
again. He refuses the assistance offered from various friends, believing only in his own
brute strength and ability to endure. He rants, “because you do not know me. Because
you do not know who I am. Who Franz Biberkopf is. He’s not afraid of anything. I have
my fists! Just look at what muscles I have” to his lover Lina during an argument (Döblin
213). When he meets Lina, “he has sworn to all the world and to himself to remain
respectable” (Döblin 47). However, in this moment he will begin to realize it is not the
city, but the social interactions and people Biberkopf surrounds himself with that
challenge him to remain respectable.
Through a diverse range of social interactions, Biberkopf is slowly affected and
begins losing himself and ultimately comes to the brink of his sanity at the end of the
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novel after his love has been killed, desperate and lost. This collapse from sanity, after his
days in a space with extreme stimulus overload leads to, “constant shifts in one’s
attention to sounds, images, movement. […] so the means for narrating the chosen
elements shift, as the interest of an alter big-city resident may shift without losing himself
as focal point.” (Fassbinder 50). As mentioned earlier, Döblin writes in the style of
“montage”, which creates a disjointed story line for the reader, but also a more raw and
sensory one. Combining elements of Biberkopf’s past, present, and future, with the
elements of the public sphere, these interactions and relationships break Biberkopf down
by constantly jumping from past to present, mixed with, “the city itself—a gigantic, in its
true dimensions, unfathomable, constantly growing, rampant, endlessly changing being”
(Benjamin 26). Alexanderplatz functions as the backdrop for the main scene where the
city takes control of Biberkopf, emulating, “a dark force that devours the ‘little man’ and
in the end leaves behind only the indigestible” (Steinfeld 56). What is left of Biberkopf
after Alexanderplatz has chewed him up and spit him out is someone utterly alienated and
desperate for direction. He searches for a break from this maddening hyper-stimulation
within the puzzling complex of the public sphere. Biberkopf loses his moral direction the
deeper he retreats into the subterranean public transit landscape. Only when he leaves the
city behind, in the suburbs of Berlin, does Biberkopf feel happy and safe with his lover
Mieze.
He doesn’t learn the city’s not to blame until long after he leaves prison. Until
then he blames his struggles on the city. As a result, Berlin becomes something he needs
to conquer. Biberkopf thereby makes his forthcoming journey harder by pitting himself
against the metropolis. Instead of adapting his movements to the structures of the built
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environment and traffic, he clashes and struggles with it. A common occurrence for while
Biberkopf is “walking leisurely along the rattling trolley line, look out, don’t get off
while the car is in motion! Wait till the car stops!” (Döblin 167). Alexanderplatz was
designed for organized flow of traffic and pedestrians, but Biberkopf manages to do the
opposite. Through clashing with his environment and initiating questionable relationships,
(especially with Reinhold,) Biberkopf becomes the only person responsible for the
“blows” to follow. His lack of human insight prevents him from developing friendships
and leads to his repeated disappointments in his surrounding environment.
Döblin’s Literary Metropolis
The concept of time is absent from Berlin Alexanderplatz. The reader never
knows what time of day Biberkopf frequents his regular spaces (such as the bar,
apartment or street). Döblin makes a conscious decision to be descriptive about particular
aspects of both Berlin and Biberkopf, like the structural space and current events, but
when it comes to time, he is strikingly vague. This vagueness is normal to Döblin
because for Berliners the metropolis functions on a twenty-four hour schedule. Berlin
was a “the city that never sleeps”. The public transit system functions under the structure
of this twenty-four hour schedule, with no closing time on the weekends. This made
public transportation readily available at any given hour of the day. Alexanderplatz,
similar to other major transit hubs around the world like Penn Station and Gare du Nord,
is the busiest location in Berlin. These three transit hubs, even though located in different
countries and cultures, support high traffic flow daily, while still creating a space where
people congregate. However, Alexanderplatz differs, in that it supports a creative,
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organic atmosphere of thought. When people interact and gather in Alexanderplatz, they
exchange cultural capital along with economic capital. This transforms Alexanderplatz,
as primarily a transit space, into a space that is always moving and growing into
something new with every sunrise. The cafes and bars stay open until the early morning,
full of conversations and ideas. They become second homes for the night owls and
wanderers. For Biberkopf, his bar, Löwenbrau Patzenhofer, is where his friends
congregate, where he learns about current events, and where he goes after he has his fight
with Mieze, his girlfriend. There he finds his friend, Georgie, the bartender, who will
comfort and distract him with a beer and a listening ear (Döblin 115).
Berlin is highly organized through a complex network of trains, streetcars, cars,
and buses. Döblin illustrates the complexity through long-winded passages as follows:
“Car No. 68 runs across Rosenthaler Platz, Wittenau, Nordbahnhof, Heilanstalt,
Weddingplatz, Stettiner Station, Rosenthaler Platz, Alexanderplatz, Straussberger
Platz, Frankfurter Allee Station, Lichtenberg, Herzberge Insane Asylum. The
three Berlin transport companies—street-car, elevated and underground,
omnibus—form a tariff-union” (Döblin 53).
Sometimes these routes are confusing because they overlap and loop above and below
ground. Public transit in Berlin invaded all spaces and levels of the metropolis. This
network becomes part of every Berliner’s mental map of the city from childhood.
Because it is second nature to the local Berliner to know which train or bus to take,
Döblin’s montage technique focuses on accommodating the local reader.
Illustrated as in the passage above, Döblin writes Berlin Alexanderplatz as a
montage instead of as a strictly linear narrative. This reinforces Biberkopf role as a lost
soul wandering around Berlin aimlessly. Döblin has a unique ability to evoke the essence
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of a city on paper. Harald Jähner, a Döblin scholar, describes the author’s style of
montage as follows:
“the intricate web of the city: by listing the stations of a streetcar line; by fleeting
observations ranging from the open spaces of large squares to the glandular
functions of some random passersby; by describing the unfolding network of
streets […]. The listing of street names, intersections, and streetcar lines forms a
cartographic textual structure, which Döblin develops further by means of literary
montage” (Jähner 146).
Döblin paints the diverse scene of Berlin Alexanderplatz for the reader by listing a
jumble of street names in a single long-winded passage to create a makeshift map. For
example, “in the northeast part of the city, from Eldenaer Strasse across Thaerstrasse
across Landsberger Allee as far as Cotheniusstrasse along the Belt Line Railway”
highlights Döblin’s montage (Döblin 142).
This “map” will function very differently for the two groups that read Berlin
Alexanderplatz – the local and the foreign. Knowing where the novel is situated in Berlin,
the foreigner assumes that Biberkopf is in and around Alexanderplatz the entire time. But
to the local audience, his movement is actually citywide; Berlin Alexanderplatz is just the
central node of the story. For example, in the passage above, the location described
actually is miles away from Alexanderplatz. This will alter their experience with the
novel by not associating Biberkopf with Alexanderplatz or projecting his or her own past
experience on where Biberkopf’s story takes him.
The only point in the novel where a direct plan of travel and destination is
executed is the day when Biberkopf and Mieze, leave the city and go to Freienwalde.
Freienwalde is a park on the outskirts of the city surrounded by lush forest and home to a
beer garden. The silence of nature functions as a safe space needed in order for Biberkopf
and Mieze mend the broken pieces of their struggling relationship, which lacks trust and
Latimer 35
safety. However, inevitably they will have to reenter the destructive environment of
Berlin at the end of the day. Biberkopf and Mieze get in a fight about one of her clients
and to whom she owes her loyalty, which turns into a heated argument quickly, and, “she
runs after him, but Biberkopf turns around at once and strikes her in the face, so that she
reels back and he pummels her shoulder and she falls” (Döblin 462). Freienwalde doesn’t
heal every time someone in the novel visits it however. The next time Mieze leaves the
city, she goes without Biberkopf, but meets with Reinhold through a set up arranged by
Max, Biberkopf’s friend. What Mieze doesn’t know when she arrives is that she will
never return to Berlin. During a heated argument in the forest, Reinhold loses his temper
and kills her in a rage. The stark contrast between these two visits, which both occur
removed from Alexanderplatz, ultimately bring Biberkopf to the breaking point. It is only
for a brief moment in the novel that Biberkopf finds sanity because he is utterly happy
“kissing her wildly in the car” on the way to Freienwalde (Döblin 467). But,
unfortunately, Biberkopf repeats the past and falls in love with Mieze. He once again
tangles business and pleasure and ultimately leads him to succumb to a similar fate as the
one he had previously experienced before going to jail. Döblin scolds his protagonist
when he notices, “You’re sitting on the same old spot. Ida’s name is Mieze, and one of
your arms is gone, but look out, you’ll take to boozing, too, and everything will start all
over again, only much worse this time, and that’ll be the end of you” (Döblin 363). This
foreshadows the end of the novel, when Biberkopf finds himself released from an insane
asylum and lives the rest of his days as a gatekeeper at a factory.
Biberkopf, for his part, has no control over language; language runs through the
city and past him. The seemingly random texts that Döblin inserts into the narrative, like
Latimer 36
the newspaper clippings and radio voices, the reader gains an understanding of the ways
in which the city operates apart from its individual inhabitants, and how its lines of
communication flow through the entire collective body of the city. Presenting the
landscape of Berlin through Biberkopf’s stream of conscious, Döblin utilizes the
language of the city to explore memory as a theater stage, by incorporating the noise of
the construction sites, the shouts of the street vendors, the screeching of the streetcars into
the scene. These noises consume Biberkopf, until his only choice is to scream out himself
in song and add to the language of the city as, “the echo resounded from the walls. That
was fine. His voice filled his ears. […] And then: ‘Tra-la-la-la-la-la-la,’ a bit from a song.
Nobody paid any attention to him” (Döblin 9). As Biberkopf wanders through “written
environment” of the streets, he rediscovers parts of himself. Biberkopf “must not be
afraid to return again and again to the same matter; to scatter it as one scatters earth, to
turn it over as one turns over soil” (Benjamin 26). What Benjamin describes in this
passage as the “fruitless searching” is crucial to the growth of Biberkopf as an individual,
separate from the chaos of the city.
As mentioned previously, Berlin Alexanderplatz is a text constructed from a
montage of other texts. Within the text, Biberkopf’s has a close relationship with the
newspaper and other political texts. These affect his conversations and his relationships.
Döblin novel had this affect on other writers, seen by the well over 100 reviews and
essays published in German and foreign periodicals (Sander 145). Many authors gained
inspiration from Berlin Alexanderplatz, including Weimar theorist and literary analysts
like Walter Benjamin. Benjamin published volumes of essays about texts, authors and
cities, known most commonly for essays on the Flâneur, Franz Kafka, and Marcel Proust.
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Associated with the Frankfurt School, a school of neo-Marxist interdisciplinary social
theory, Benjamin focused his writings on educational and cultural change. Published
posthumously, “A Berlin Chronicle” illustrates Benjamin’s relationship to Berlin
spatially through the memory perspective of a child.
According to Benjamin, strong sensory elements, like smell and touch, can create
strong memories. A child’s memory of a space can be built by these different senses, and
can alter the importance it holds for the child. For Benjamin, his grade school holds vivid
visual memory. He distinctly remembers the, “unspeakable gray-green ornaments
adorning the wall of the hall, and the absurd bosses and scrolls of the cast-iron
balustrades” (Benjamin 51). Along with visual reconciliation of memory, Benjamin
describes the importance of language in memory, declaring, “language shows clearly that
memory is not an instrument for exploring the past but its theater” (Benjamin 26).
And yet, after a person experiences a traumatic event, like Biberkopf murdering
Ida, many will re-experience the trauma mentally and physically or will turn to
psychoactive substances to try to escape the desperate feelings of irrevocable loss (“What
is Trauma?”). These are both symptoms that the mind and body are actively struggling to
cope with the traumatic experience. Döblin makes it clear that Biberkopf’s experience
with the city was a struggle to address the past, which was a cyclical and repetitive event
accessed through the style of montage writing. Döblin describes Biberkopf’s repetitive
traumatic experience with Berlin via a series of repeated “conquests.” Halfway through
the novel, Doblin says,
“Biberkopf has come to Berlin for the third time. The first time the roofs were
about to slide off, then the Jews came and he was saved. The second time Lüders
cheated but he swigged his way through. Now, the third time, his arm is gone, but
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he ventures courageously into the city. The man’s got courage, two- and threefold
courage” (Döblin 324).
Biberkopf is constantly venturing back into the city. Why does he never give up and let
the city win?
While this repetitive trauma is obvious in Döblin’s novel, but even more apparent
in the 1980 film adaption of Berlin Alexanderplatz, directed by Werner Rainer Fassbinder.
Fassbinder’s attention to the raw emotion depicted throughout the novel allowed him to
create a dynamic film, which stays relevant and influential still today.
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Chapter 3
Alexanderplatz Exposed: Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Film
Friedrich Nietzsche said, “every great philosophy has been the confession of its
maker, as if it were his involuntary and unconscious autobiography” (Benjamin 31).
Alfred Döblin’s novel, Berlin Alexanderplatz, illustrates his, as the author, relationship
and understanding of Berlin through Biberkopf’s scattered emotional journey. Döblin’s
novel allows the reader to form personal connections with Berlin and Franz Biberkopf.
One of those readers was fourteen-year-old Rainer Werner Fassbinder. He first read the
novel and discover later he, “wasn’t reading any more, but rather, living, suffering,
despairing, fearing,” Berlin Alexanderplatz (Schütte 100). When Fassbinder was asked to
direct the film adaptation of Berlin Alexanderplatz, he immediately accepted. Not only
was this a prestigious offer from the Bavaria Film Studios, but also Döblin’s 1929 novel
was important in shaping Fassbinder’s life. The book turned into a lifeline, that “helped
[him] to admit [his] tormenting fear, which almost crippled [him], the fear of
acknowledging [his] homosexual desires, or realizing [his] repressed need; this book
helped [him] to keep from becoming totally sick, mendaciously desperate” (Schütte 100).
Years later he realized he strongly identified with the protagonist Franz Biberkopf. His
film was a beautiful, intense portrayal of Döblin’s novel, which incorporated both his
own autobiographical connection and confession and Germany’s national narrative of the
1970s.
The combination of personal and national connection allowed him to represent the
landscape of Alexanderplatz differently than it was originally written in the novel. By
internalizing the physical representation and allowing the subconscious tensions
Latimer 40
associated with the metropolis to surface, Fassbinder encourages the viewer to dive into
the gritty underworld with Biberkopf. Unlike a previous 1931 feature film production that
was unable able to include all characters in its two-hour time allotment, Fassbinder was
able to thoroughly and honestly depict the novel through a film, a mini-series, of fifteen
hour-long episodes, airing every Sunday night. Thus, Fassbinder’s film adaptation of
Berlin Alexanderplatz allows the landscape to be brought to life. Fassbinder accomplishes
an honest depiction of the 1920s story by internalizing the landscape of Berlin. He
redirects the flow of the novel’s narrative through Alexanderplatz in a different way than
Döblin had. The city experience is interpreted through his reactions and shot through his
point of view. Through this, Fassbinder provides a new depiction of Berlin
Alexanderplatz.
Rainer Werner Fassbinder was a key figure of the New German Cinema
movement as both a film director and screenwriter from 1965 to his death in 1982.
Influenced by the French New Wave, New German Cinema produced a number of
explorative films on low budgets through the creative work of young new directors.
When Fassbinder was asked to direct the TV series of Berlin Alexanderplatz, he was 35,
at which at that point he was already a veteran in the film industry, having started when
he was 24. It was going to be one of the last films he ever produced, due to his sudden
death in 1982 at the age of 37. In an interview before the release of the TV series,
Fassbinder stated in a press conference, “I am Biberkopf” (Shattuc 134). In a literal sense,
this is true because he personally narrated the excerpts of the novel inserted between
scenes in the film. Fassbinder’s intensely personal interpretation of the story of Franz
Biberkopf has been critiqued for being too autobiographical, with a heightened focus on
Latimer 41
the relationship between Reinhold and Biberkopf, and a diminished role of the city
(Shattuc 137). The city’s role, however, is not diminished, but instead has been
internalized within Biberkopf.
Berlin from Biberkopf’s Perspective
When Fassbinder agreed to take on Berlin Alexanderplatz, he committed himself
to depicting a city of the past, one in which different political and cultural circumstances
controlled. The Alexanderplatz of Fassbinder’s time was in no way similar to the Platz of
the Weimar Period. Physically, Alexanderplatz, and, “Döblin’s city was mostly gone,
destroyed by Allied bombs, Soviet artillery, and East German wreaking balls. And what
little was left, in the east, was hidden behind the Berlin Wall, and thus out of bounds for
Fassbinder and his crew” (Buruma 2008). However, Fassbinder’s focus was not on a
literal depiction of 1920s Berlin, but what he termed the true depiction of 1920s Berlin
(Thomsen 235). Fassbinder felt that, “you could tell how it really would look out on the
streets better from the kind of refuges people created for themselves, what kinds of bars
they went to, how they lived in their apartments, and so on” (Buruma 2008). This focus
on interior space was a stylistic decision by Fassbinder, but also stemmed from his belief
Berlin was better seen through the interior spaces (Buruma 2008). With the set built and
filmed in a Munich movie studio, panoramic views or long shots were impossible, so he
focused on details, close-ups, window frames, blinking neon signs, bar tables, and stoops.
Therefore, Franz Biberkopf’s personal internalized experience of Berlin becomes the
visual focus of the film.
Latimer 42
Fassbinder’s career can be divided into three distinct stylistic phases. His first ten
movies, from 1969 to 1971, were an extension of his work in the theater, using a static
camera and deliberate, unnaturalistic dialogue. The second phase was trademarked by
films that explored the ingrained prejudices about race, sex, sexual orientation, and
politics, which lead to Fassbinder’s rise in international attention. The final fourteen films
were more varied, featuring international actors along with collaborative work with
famous artists, such as Andy Warhol for his film Querelle. Berlin Alexanderplatz was in
the Fassbinder’s phase, with the use of international actors, Günter Lamprecht and Hanna
Schygulla. Fassbinder’s impression on the film industry help defined the German film
industry as experimental and raw that exposed deep-seated human truth (Ruffell 2002).
The interior spaces of the film shape the viewer’s connection with the character of
Franz Biberkopf. Fassbinder removes Biberkopf from the street and places him in more
intimate settings, such as his apartment and local corner bar. These locations are a more
consistent setting for his long monologues about life and recitations of the current events
from the newspaper. In these extended close-ups, Fassbinder’s intense focus - bordering
on obsession - with the character of Biberkopf is clear.
Fassbinder’s personal connection to the novel translates to the film as an example
of the concept of the auteur theory. In film criticism, the auteur theory is when the
director’s personal creative vision is expressed as if they were the primary character and
viewer. The most common examples of auteur theory are in art films, where the script
and story are unique, the director is chosen for his or her unique voice, and allowed more
creative freedom. Fassbinder, for example, removes Biberkopf from the street and places
him in the private sphere, which strips the character down to his bare existence. Through
Latimer 43
this intimate point-of-view, the viewer is encouraged to connect with Biberkopf’s
mediocre, day-to-day universal existence. Alexanderplatz, Biberkopf’s home, is firstly a
public space, automatically making Biberkopf’s experience public.
Fassbinder’s focus on the domestic, private sphere instead of the novel’s emphasis
on the public sphere allows the city to play a different role in the film. As previously
discussed, Alexanderplatz’s transportation hubs became Biberkopf’s second home in the
novel, full of different social interactions and visual stimuli. The Alexanderplatz subway
station is where Biberkopf worked, talked with friends, and kept up on current events.
Fassbinder’s representation of the subway station is dark, with low ceilings with a
constant flow of pedestrian traffic and the rare pause to glance at the newspaper or grab a
coffee. It is so dark that the people rushing past fade into the darkness and become apart
of the background. The symbolism of descending down under the city into the subway
system connects with the architecture of the city touched upon in the Fritz Lang film,
Metropolis. In Metropolis, the city is organized in vertical, hierarchal levels, in which the
workers live under the city and the upper class lives elevated in tall skyscrapers. The two
spheres rarely interact; only when two people from different spheres fall in love does one
become aware of the other (Metropolis). Interactions between different spheres, whether
that is the public and private spheres, or the bourgeois and lower class interact, both
occur in public transport hubs. When public transportation became a normal everyday
action across all class levels, all of Berlin inherently descended into the “underworld”
everyday (Jelavich 9). It is in this congested, dark space where momentous events of the
Döblin novel occur, including Biberkopf’s confession of his love for Cilly and an
argument ending the friendship between Meck and Biberkopf. All of Biberkopf’s jobs,
Latimer 44
beside selling shoelaces door-to-door, are based in the subway station. From selling
neckties and homosexual pornographic magazines and finally a politically fascist
newspaper, Biberkopf connects to diverse groups who would need those products and
pass through the space daily. Alexanderplatz has the ability to function simultaneously as
a place of work and a home. Through the design’s focus on providing an organic flow
through a node, Alexanderplatz is able to hold spatial importance for all classes of society.
In Fassbinder’s film, not only does the subway station replace street as a setting
for scenes, but the private, individualized spaces such as the bar and Biberkopf’s
apartment function as the main backdrop for Biberkopf’s story instead of the city streets.
Within his apartment, Biberkopf can be the person he wants to be, where as outside, the
city forces him to make quick decisions about his morals. Overwhelmed and brash, he
normally makes the wrong decisions and experiences the consequences later. However,
when secluded in his apartment and surrounded by the people that support him,
Biberkopf is able to make moral decisions and grow into the person he strives to be.
Throughout the story, he is tested about whether he can stay out of trouble; somehow he
surrounds himself with people that tempt him back in the dark underworld of criminals.
When he does give into temptation, he disappears into the city away from his loved ones,
only later to be found in a random hotel room with empty beer bottles strewed around
him. Fassbinder shows that “the ever present threat of the street intrudes on Biberkopf’s
interior world through the use of expressionistic neon lights and thunderstorms that cast
their blinking, garish light into the domestic arena” naggingly reminding Biberkopf the
outside world is lingering (Shattuc 144). Fassbinder reverses “Döblin’s celebration of the
Latimer 45
city by using the closed studio space to create a womblike world that parallels the
unstable psychological needs of his protagonist” (Shattuc 144).
Every Sunday night, when the new episode of Berlin Alexanderplatz began with
the same opening credits montage sequence. The credits are set against a backdrop of
quintessential Weimar Berlin and modern metropolis images including masses of workers,
advertisements, and other cultural monuments of 1920s Berlin, which were overlaid with
train wheels driving forward repetitively. The juxtaposition of these two images, one of
the past memory of the Weimar Alexanderplatz that no longer existed, and the modern
machine literally running over history situates the viewer in the context of pre-existing
memories of industrialization. Döblin is frequently recognized by critics for his
successful use of montage to bridge the gap between the public and private sphere, as
well as the individual and collective psyche (Sander 147). In the opening credits,
Fassbinder also tackles montage and its positive effect for the reader’s relationship with
the story and protagonist by combining the still and the moving. In these opening credits,
the viewer is introduced to one of the main characters of Biberkopf’s story: Berlin. The
dominant presence of transportation situates the reader in the public sphere. However, the
repetitive images of capitalist day-to-day life are misleading. Biberkopf is a citizen of the
Berlin “underworld,” and not someone who participates in the nine-to-five factory
lifestyle. However, with the story being based in the main transport hub of Berlin,
Biberkopf is inherently integrated into the fast paced environment of the industrialized
city. The massive amount of cars that pass through the Platz is an accurate depiction of
the frenzy that was Alexanderplatz. Biberkopf moves through the square as intended by
Latimer 46
the architects and engineers who designed Alexanderplatz, stopping to interact as a
consumer and pedestrian.
Fassbinder mirrors the 1927 film, Berlin: Symphony of the Metropolis in his
opening to Berlin Alexanderplatz. Both films open with barreling train wheels spinning
quickly. Although in Fassbinder’s opening, the train wheels are barreling over the
memories of Weimar Berlin and the new modern city, in Berlin: Symphony of the
Metropolis, the train is violently flashing through the countryside heading towards the
metropolis. The train approaches the city, speeding past the suburbs and eventually
reaching the train station, where the clanging iron finds its home among the modern
industrial architecture. There exists a continuing notion that the city can only be
understood from an internalized familiar perspective, for instance the beauty found in the
power of the train is only realized when surrounded by a complimentary architecture of
steel and iron (Berlin: Symphony of the Metropolis).
The film balances two different genres: the melodramatic television adaptation
and the confessional art film. Film holds a responsibility of not creating “the liquidation
of traditional value in the cultural heritage” (Benjamin 221). Film has the ability to
appeal to a variety of classes, races, and genders. The balance between low and high
culture in Berlin Alexanderplatz allows the film accessible to many different types of
viewers. For example, the constant domestic disputes give the film an amount of tension,
which keeps the viewer looking towards the next episode. But, the gritty, intense, five-
minute monologues, force the viewer to consider stylistic choices and how that affects
Biberkopf’s story. Fassbinder reaches out to the individual viewer to make an individual
connection by representing the common human experience through the three main
Latimer 47
characters: Franz, Reinhold, and Mieze. In this trio, Franz does everything in his power to
prevent true self-knowledge, while Mieze is a pure spirit and Reinhold has given himself
over to an evil psychotic misogyny. Through these three characters, the collective
population of Berlin is represented. Fassbinder represents the collective and the
individual role in Alexanderplatz simultaneously, by shooting scenes both on the street,
as well in the interior spaces of Berlin, such as the apartment and bar. This spaces
function differently, however, with the street bringing physical pain to Biberkopf, like his
arm being run over and other encounters, while the interior spaces bring emotional pain
of past trauma.
Through his emphasis on the interior of the city, Fassbinder accomplishes his own
version of montage through film methods. He uses montage to show the extent of the
trauma affecting Biberkopf. At the same point in every episode, Biberkopf will be living
his daily life and suddenly the scene flashes back to when he killed Ida. Fassbinder
represents the cyclical relationship with the city visually by inserting the scene of
Biberkopf murdering Ida repeatedly throughout the film at moments when Biberkopf is
scared or lost about how to continue in his life. Music or mindless narration will play
over this reoccurring scene, instilling a feeling of confusion and fear, similar to what
Biberkopf feels, in every viewer (Berlin Alexanderplatz). Döblin’s montages integrate the
language of the city in Biberkopf’s stream of consciousness. Fassbinder’s montages begin
with close-up shots of Biberkopf reading a newspaper clipping, which then pans out and
captures the surrounding bustling environment. In that moment the viewer is aware of
how important the setting of Berlin is to the journey of Biberkopf. The Platz functions as
Latimer 48
an incubator for many lost souls questioning their role in a society that appears to be
more focused on advancing its machines, than its population’s creative capabilities.
Exposing the Subterranean Trauma
Biberkopf’s story is complimented by the setting of Berlin, because it permits him
to explore the deep psychological levels of the common human experience through the
many layers of the city. Dipping into the subterranean epicenter of Alexanderplatz station,
pausing on street level and then soaring above to the skyline lined with sliding roofs,
Fassbinder’s film takes advantage of the wide variety of spaces that makeup Berlin. As a
director, he interacts with the physical, literal space of Berlin, but focuses on the
internalized representation of the city in small spaces. Through the filmic exploration of
the internalized experience of Berlin and German society during Weimar Berlin
represented in relation to 1970s Berlin, Fassbinder is able to “pervade the sensation, the
sensibility, and the emotions of individuals” that cannot be grasped in the field of
political institutions and discourses (Kappelhoff 206). Fassbinder approaches this
internalized representation indirectly through scene placements and character
development. He doesn’t open the film with the postcard aerial overview of
Alexanderplatz, but instead the alleyways and courtyards and the people that fill these
spaces. However, in the epilogue, titled “My Dream of Franz Biberkopf’s Dream by
Alfred Döblin”, the suppressed representations come to the surface and fill Biberkopf’s
head and Berlin’s streets.
After thirteen hours, the viewer reaches the epilogue an discovers a radical
aesthetic break from the previous episodes, consisting of a fragmentary montage of
Latimer 49
dreamlike incidents, imaginings, and visions that reflect Biberkopf’s devastated mental
landscape following Reinhold’s murder of Mieze. The epilogue functions as a healing
process for Biberkopf, as well as a stage for Fassbinder to address society’s influence on
mental processes. Fassbinder related to Biberkopf’s story so much that he crafted his own
two-hour epilogue because he felt that the Döblin’s ending was inconclusive. In response,
Fassbinder produces a revolutionary filmic depiction of the preexisting national trauma:
Germany’s past crimes of fascism and lack of healing after World War I when the public
did not look to the past. When World War I ended in 1918 in Germany, the nation
immediately plunged into the Weimar years full of inflation, culture and modernism. As
the Weimar Period started to fade, the attention shifted to Germany’s new chancellor,
Adolf Hitler, who rose to power in January 1933. In the short fifteen years, between 1918
and 1933, Germany ignored its wounds of the war and moved on by focusing on creating
modernist cities rising to the international stage with culture and design (German Senate
Department). Fassbinder’s depiction of Alexanderplatz through memory in the epilogue
and the novel by internalizing the city through Biberkopf’s experience and point of view
incorporates themes of lost German culture during the Third Reich and German
Democratic Republic years. Through this Berlin Alexanderplatz is reawakened into a late
twentieth century context of German identity. Public space in a city exists for the masses,
as a gathering space and a transit space. With time, history writes itself upon the space
through architectural expression or the fluctuating use the space receives. Alexanderplatz,
for Germany, was a site of demonstrations, revolts, as well as, peaceful conversations
between friends. In Fassbinder’s epilogue, Alexanderplatz functions as all three for
Biberkopf.
Latimer 50
As Biberkopf awakes into “My Dream of Franz Biberkopf’s Dream by Alfred
Döblin” he finds himself standing in the candle-covered streets of Berlin surrounded by
the faces of his past. Two angels guide him through this space and badger him with
questions about his past choices and remaining emotions that linger around Mieze’s
sudden death. In the first few minutes, Biberkopf asks with puzzlement “What city is
this? What enormous city is this?” In this moment, the viewer realizes Biberkopf has not
seen Berlin before this point. Previously, Fassbinder internalized this landscape of Berlin
in order for Biberkopf to address his existing trauma. The subterranean landscape,
devious friendships, and hardships of lost love have stolen Biberkopf’s attention until this
point. In this moment in the epilogue, he wakes up in this dream and the real city is
brought to the surface and seen with all its imperfections, i.e. the past scorned
relationships. The epilogue functions as an ending to Biberkopf’s journey, Fassbinder’s
journey, and the viewer’s journey. Biberkopf is reborn into the Alexanderplatz and learns
how the space functions for the masses of Berlin through the new way it appears to him.
New and old faces brush past by him and spaces that use to fade into the background
become physical and mental barriers to his desire flow through the Platz. He becomes a
citizen of the metropolis. With becoming a citizen of the metropolis, Biberkopf becomes
a citizen who carries the burdens of personal and national history (Berlin Alexanderplatz).
The burdens of history lay heavily upon Western Germany during the middle of
the twentieth century. This is not without reason, “no nation in the world has committed
greater crimes […] the atrocities of the Third Reich have come to define the outer limits
of state-sponsored brutality and human cruelty” (Berger 35). The war ended, the Reich
fell, and Germany was left to pick up the pieces of their national identity and move on.
Latimer 51
As Thomas Berger outlines in his book, War, Guilt, and World Politics after World War
II, Germany adopted a penitent official narrative. This narrative was structured by the
historical influence as well the cultural influence. People who align with historical
determinism, believe “historical narratives – both on the official level and as embedded in
the broader society – are an integral part of the overall cultural system that conditions the
kind of official narrative that can be adopted by the state” (Berger 23). The historical
narrative of Berlin during the 1970s, during the production of Fassbinder’s Berlin
Alexanderplatz, was one that reflected upon and addressed the horrors of World War II
and was still making great efforts to apologize. The world responded by rewarding
Germany for expressing guilt and allowed it to reintegrate back into the community of
nations. Through its expression of remorse and the world’s acceptance, Germany began
to rebuild its national pride through involvement from all sectors of society, including
political, cultural, and societal. For example, through the representation of Nazism in
television and film between 1963 and 1978, the programs featuring Nazi and World War
II images “offered audience members the opportunity to reshape their own memories or
imagine their parents’ experiences in terms of clearly designated types and historical
actors and stereotypical situations” (Kansteiner 140).
However, Fassbinder strove to upset this habit of addressing the historical past
superficially, by bringing the public the harrowing representation of Biberkopf’s story.
By psychologizing the urban landscape, he pushes the limits of comfort that normally
surrounds media representation of World War II. By responding to the social stresses of
the 1970s with his interpretation of Döblin’s 1920’s Berlin Weimar landscape, Fassbinder
combines the past and present in a montage. He feared that with acceptance of the past
Latimer 52
would come acceptance with current 1970s situation. The situation at the time for
Germany was a division between the East Soviet Block and the West Federal Republic,
which had no sign of changing in the near future. Instead, the Federal Republic was
focused on maintaining their international respect separate from their eastern counterpart,
by being “one of the most resolute supports of the policy of confrontation and
containment of the Soviet Union” (Berger 61). Döblin’s story provides the stage for
Fassbinder to raise these issues with Germany during the mid twentieth century, by
forcing the viewer to see him or herself in Biberkopf.
Latimer 53
Conclusion
Throughout the last three chapters, Alexanderplatz was looked at from three
different perspectives: the urban planner, the novelist, and the filmmaker. Each of these
perspectives allowed Alexanderplatz to take on a new identity because each beholder of
the space emphasized the structural elements of Alexanderplatz from different points of
view. Alexanderplatz also inspired them in different ways emotionally and mentally to
illustrate a space that would hold importance through the decades. By incorporating these
three different perspectives into one study of Alexanderplatz, new insight about the space
is revealed.
Not only did Alexanderplatz command dominance as the center of Berlin
transport, but it also accomplished it with organic fluidity. This fluidity came from an
optimistic view of what the designers thought was possible during the booming modern
Weimar Period. From this viewpoint, Berlin’s Alexanderplatz underwent multiple
transformations, but ultimately stuck to its main function as a transit space of
transportation and pedestrians, while simultaneously a transit space for the movement of
ideas and information. The architects and designers strove to integrate the commercial
and individual social experience into one space that was Alexanderplatz. They were
successful in this integration because it inspired Alfred Döblin to write his historically
influential novel, Berlin Alexanderplatz in 1929, when Alexanderplatz was undergoing
yet another transformation.
The protagonist of Berlin Alexanderplatz, Franz Biberkopf, provides a creative
example of how the public urban space can affect an individual’s psyche. The give and
take relationship with Alexanderplatz unforgiving landscape drives Biberkopf to the
Latimer 54
brink of sanity. Alexanderplatz comes alive through a creative literary context, one that
Döblin provides through the use of montage. The seamless integration of sounds from the
city into the conversations and thoughts of Biberkopf, make the individual and the
environment he or she lives in one. The symbiotic relationship between Alexanderplatz
and Biberkopf allows the reader to connect on a personal level.
One of these people that connected on a personal level was filmmaker, Rainer
Werner Fassbinder. Through his film adaptation, released in 1980, Alexanderplatz was
reawakened into a new decade through a new perspective. Fassbinder exposes
Biberkopf’s deep-seated traumatic past to the viewer and provides a way to heal by
internalizing the city within Biberkopf. Fassbinder’s film builds a bridge between the
visual and written depiction of Alexanderplatz and explores the ideas of 1920s Weimar
Berlin in a 1970s political context.
All three of these different perspectives allow Alexanderplatz to embrace its
multidimensional role as a public space. Designed to support the ebb and flow of the
industrialized transit system as well the creative transit of ideas and information,
Alexanderplatz is able to encompass all of 1920s Weimar society. Alexanderplatz was
able to accomplish this by creating a space that the masses felt was theirs and defined
what they stood for during Weimar Berlin. The ability a public space has to define a
metropolis and its population demonstrates why in city planning today there should
continue to be an emphasis on the city square.
Latimer 55
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